Please fire Doc

[Ranma]

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[Alex DeLarge]

It's obviously a conflict of interest, whether or not you rate Doc or Austin (or both).

[Alex DeLarge]

To be fair to Doc, he didn't want to trade for his son to avoid such perceived conflict of interests or so he says. His staff supposedly convinced him to make the deal. I seriously doubt he would not trade for Durant with Austin as the only obstacle to accomplishing that. At the same time, I'm sure he'd catch some hell from his wife and kids if he traded for George, who cheated on Doc's daughter. In any case, neither scenario is likely and Austin probably isn't long for this organization whether Doc stays or not; Austin was looking for greener pastures this past off-season but only returned because he couldn't find any takers offering him more money than Doc. It remains to be seen whether Austin will exercise his player option for next season, which is funny to think that a guy on the brink of being out of the league was able to negotiate that option into his current deal.

I tend to agree that Doc probably would throw Austin into a trade if it meant landing a superstar.

The bigger problem, IMO, is that the Doc-Austin relationship will prevent Doc from looking to find better backup guards. I mentioned Ish Smith as an example. That's the type of player that was out there Doc been so inclined to look. However, because Austin is Doc's son, that sort of move is probably considered lateral (at best) in LAC HQ.

When you have two top 10 players, you should be in contention. A good backup PG can be the difference between 55 wins and 60 wins; between a second round exit and a championship. With the Warriors and Spurs playing historically great basketball, the Clippers can't afford to be this flawed.

[QRich3]

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6th best defense in the league since he moved Luc into the starting line up

[og15]

Nice, I know the team has had lesser offensive opponents. Looking at it, in Luc's 15 starts:

Minnesota (101.5 Ortg / 18th)
Portland (102.7 Ortg / 12th)
Indiana (102.6 Ortg / 14th)
Orlando (102.1 Ortg / 16th)
Minnesota (101.5 Ortg / 18th)
Milwaukee (100.0 Ortg / 26th)
Chicago (99.3 Ortg / 27th)
Brooklyn (98.1 Ortg / 28th)
Detroit (100.4 Ortg / 23rd)
Milwaukee (100.0 Ortg / 26th)
San Antonio (106.7 Ortg / 3rd)
Houston (102.6 Ortg / 13th)
OKC (108.7 Ortg / 2nd)
LA Lakers (96.7 Ortg / 29th)
Utah (102.3 Ortg / 15th)

If we average it out, the opponents Ortg in that span has been 101.7, so it is possible that the Clippers have still just been playing "average" defense, just against a lot of below average offensive teams.

Over the next games, the team will play more above average offensive teams, but with Blake out, and Pierce likely being the one to play more, it might be hard to get any gauge of the teams defense from those games.